WispWX

Built for places where the signal is one bar: back roads, job sites, campgrounds, storm season in the middle of nowhere. You're camped somewhere with almost no service and you hear a thunderstorm coming. You pull out your phone and it just spins, because your weather app is downloading every bit of weather data it has before it will show you anything. You don't need the 12-hour or the 5-day. You want to know whether you're under a tornado warning. WispWX lets you ask for only that part. HOW IT WORKS The screen is a stack of sections: watches and warnings, current conditions, 5-day forecast, hourly, and the forecaster's written discussion. Tap the chip at the top of the screen to arm or collapse each one. Pull down to refresh and only the armed sections are requested. A line under the chips tells you what a pull will fetch, and roughly how big it will be, before you do it. Collapse everything but alerts and that's all that goes out. There's also a single button at the bottom that checks alerts and nothing else. WHAT YOU CAN PULL Watches and warnings Current conditions, with wind, dew point, humidity, pressure, and visibility 5-day forecast Hourly forecast The forecast discussion, in the forecaster's own words Each section shows how big its last response was and how long ago it arrived. NOTIFICATIONS You can opt-in to notifications for warnings only. WIDGET Current conditions and any active alert on your home screen, in small and medium. LOCATIONS Follow GPS, or save places by hand and switch between them. Handy for keeping an eye on a storm somewhere else, or on where family is. SETTINGS How often to re-check alerts while the app is open Whether to keep checking while it is closed Whether to re-check your position, and how often Severe and extreme alerts only, or everything Forecast length, from 1 to 7 days Hourly length, from 3 to 48 hours Clear the cached weather WHAT IT DOESN'T DO No radar. No account or sign-in. No ads. It works in the United States only, since it reads from the National Weather Service. Weather data comes from the National Weather Service (weather.gov). WispWX is an independent app, not affiliated with or endorsed by NOAA or the National Weather Service.